Time Machine Recovery Partition

Hi,
I am using an external HDD as my TimeMachine.
I know that it had a Recovery Partition on it.
But I seem to have lost it after I erased/reformatted it.
i THINK I'd like it back: I mean it can't hurt, right?
I just reformatted it and have redone my TimeMachine backups because I did a repair and stopped it partway thru.
Needed to take my MacBook away.
And corrupted the disk.
I thought better just start again.
But now I see it has done its first backup but I don't see a Recovery Partition on it.
I'm 100% there WAS one before I reformatted it and started over.
See copy of my diskutil list of BEFORE I reformatted.
I reformatted because I decided to get rid of the separate WinCloneBackup partition.
I was using it to store copies of my WinClone backups of BootCamp, but I've stopped that.
Doing it on another HDD.
Initial TimeMachine partition map:
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk5
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk5s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Time_Machine_Home       3.8 TB     disk5s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS WinClone_Backup         200.0 GB   disk5s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Recovery                16.0 GB    disk5s4
Current Partition map:
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home        4.0 TB     disk2s2
I thought Partition 4, the Apple Recovery, was added by TimeMachine???
Am on MacBook Pro 2012 with Mavericks.
If curious, I have a 1TB SSD Crucial plus a 1TB HDD WesternDigital on my MacBook.
So I thought I'd use a 4TH HDD for TimeMachine.
I also use CarbonCopyClone on a separate HDD to backup.
AND a separate HDD for TimeMachine at work.
Any idea?
Thanks,
Alab

Hi,
I appreciate the help here, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this really doesn't seem consistent to me.
The Terminal diskutil list command will list all partitions on any drive as far as I'm aware.
Including recovery.
Not so?
The posts on other threads seem to say that.
LowLuster, those are just Finder screenshots you've posted: I understand that the Recovery partition is usually hidden on Finder.
But not on diskutil list.
I posted two diskutil list shots of my TimeMachine HDD: before and after.
The one BEFORE reformat showed a partitiion with "Recovery": Partition 4.
The one AFTER does not show that.
For clarity I do again.
Initial TimeMachine partition map:
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk5
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk5s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Time_Machine_Home       3.8 TB     disk5s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS WinClone_Backup         200.0 GB   disk5s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Recovery                16.0 GB    disk5s4
Current Partition map:
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home        4.0 TB     disk2s2
They are different disk numbers because the diskutil lists were done with different HDD connected.
So BEFORE I did the reformat, TimeMachine was disk5.
And AFTER the reformat it was disk2.
I booted up with the option key, and I only see the startup disk recovery option.
Nothing from TimeMachine.
See attached photo.
I see BootCamp (which doesn't work properly after Mavericks screwed up my partition, but I'm about to fix that.
That's on another thread.
But that is why I want REALLY good backups in case something goes wrong.
I also attach sudo fdisk /dev/disk1 of the TimeMachine HDD.
No Recovery partition.
You can see that only one of the GUID potential partitions has anything in it: Partition 1.
There is NOTHING from a Recovery partition.
And fdisk shows EVERYTHING: nothing is "hidden" from it.
Alans-MacBook-Pro:~ arjarvis_mbp$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac_SSD                 869.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             784.2 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                89.3 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac_HDD                 999.9 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home        4.0 TB     disk2s2
Alans-MacBook-Pro:~ arjarvis_mbp$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk2
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk2          geometry: 219051/255/63 [3519069872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [         1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>
2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
Alans-MacBook-Pro:~ arjarvis_mbp$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk2
gpt show: disk2: mediasize=4000787030016; sectorsize=512; blocks=7814037168
gpt show: disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk2: Sec GPT at sector 7814037167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 7813365344      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
7813774984      262151
7814037135          32         Sec GPT table
7814037167           1         Sec GPT header
I just did a diskutil list for my CarbonCopyClone HDD, I know it has a Recovery partition (it gives you an option to make one).
See the diskutil list:
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac_SSD                 869.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             784.2 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                89.3 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mac_HDD                 999.9 GB   disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS TimeMachine_Home        4.0 TB     disk2s2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS CarbonCopyClone_SSD     1.0 TB     disk3s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             784.2 MB   disk3s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS CCC_WinClone            450.0 GB   disk3s4
   5:                  Apple_HFS CarbonCopyClone_HDD     1.5 TB     disk3s5
There are TWO Recovery HD listed here: on my startup disk0 and on CarbonCopyClone disk3.
And nothing for TimeMachine disk2.
So I'm still puzzled: how do I get TimeMachine to have a Recovery partition on it?
I definitely used to have one.
Alan

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